Moistur-izzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze

My face is oily and dry. In the summer & winter! It's totally crazy! Also, it makes finding a moisturizer the hardest job ever. Add to this the Differin that I use every other night or whenever I feel the need for extra blemish fighting power, and my skin doesn't know what to think. I think I'm finally making peace with my skin though and we've come to an understanding over the past 5 years. I can only use Clearasil Daily Face Wash or else my skin stages a revolt. But! I get so bored with it! I see all the other facial cleansers on the shelf and I'm tempted to try them. However, a few days in and my skin gets P.O.'d.

Recently I've been trying to branch out in the form of facial moisturizers. I use moisturizer in the morning and at night because my skin feels extremely dry in the morning and I want the SPF. For night, I like to use that time to give my skin the extra moisture it needs so I don't have to deal with dry skin when I put foundation on. For the past few years, I'm a solid Cetaphil Moisturizer (ps- I hate their new packaging) at night (unless I use the Differin) and during the day I'm an Olay Complete Combination user. I like the UV protection and the smell. Anything with sunscreen is going to increase the oil production on my face, but I'm not willing to go without SPF. This is something I have had to come to terms with.

My newest daytime moisturizer purchase was Aveeno Positively Radiant Daily Moisturizer with SPF 15. SPF 15 suits my needs because I'm not willing to go any higher due to oiliness and the fact that it's not going to stay on all day anyway - you're just going to have to re-apply. I'm not a big Aveeno user, they were always my sister's line. However, I've been pleasantly surprised by this product. It smells nice and I can't tell a difference in the amount of grease between Olay and Aveeno. It's too early to tell if it really is "evening out my skin tone" or "reflecting light to make me look radiant". We'll see.

Another moisturizer I'm interested in is Clinique's Youth Surge. Clinique is kind of a mom-brand - even with all the new more youth-oriented advertising. I wonder at what age will I be willing/needing to splurge on more expensive moisturizers that target problems associated with aging? Clinique's Moisture Surge also looks appealing to me. Jack & Hill's blog had an interesting review. Maybe it's time to give the Cetaphil a summer break? I also just like how grown-up the jar looks. It seems more weighty.

Cargo blu-ray Lip Gloss

I saw this in the store a few weeks ago and thought: "Seriously?" Yes. It's Cargo lip gloss with a timestrip on it to tell me when I need to go buy more. The strip reminds me of the battery good/bad line they started putting on Duracell and Energizer a few years ago. On a battery though it makes sense. On a lip gloss? Not so much for me. I'll know when to buy more by a) the tube being empty b) having someone (that I don't know well) ask for some lip gloss and feeling bad, let them use it.

On the other hand I've never used much Cargo, so this could be a great lip gloss. The color palette looks nice and with names like "Bogota" and "Belize", it's cute. Gimmicks in lip gloss can be good (lip plumping), but Cargo needs to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Danny Tanner's Favorite Time of Year...Spring Cleaning!

Perhaps one of my favorite inventions of all time is the disinfecting wipe. I realize that a "wipe" is nothing new, since they have been used on babies for decades; But I really think Clorox popularized another use for this strong but soggy disinfecting napkin. And, they even made it acceptable to be seen out in the open with their new designs. Combine this with their lavender scented edition, and I'm sold. Admittedly, it's not very close to the traditional lavender scent, but that doesn't make it less pleasant. I actually find that it attracts mass appeal (since lavender walks the line of fresh/old lady scent). So my point is, if you just want to quickly touch up your bathroom with a fresh floral-scented disinfectant, try this scent! Great for spring cleaning.

Don't get me wrong, Lysol wipes are great, too! They just don't have lavender.

What are some of your favorite cleaning products? We'd love to know!

Oil Cleansing

Last night I got totally Cr@Zy and decided to try the Oil Cleansing Method that I've been reading about. My skin is pretty oily and acne prone (the best kind!), so my first thought was oil on oily skin?? But after reading, yes please!


I bought some Jojoba Oil at Trader Joe's - I'm not brave enough to go with Castor Oil yet. I rubbed a small amount of the oil on my face and deep into my pores and then took a washcloth, soaked in hot water, and placed it on my face until the washcloth turned cool (1 question - how do you breathe? I left a small opening at the bottom). Then I repeated this process about 3 more times, until I felt like the majority of the oil was gone. As time went on my waterproof mascara was dissolved by the oil. That was neat - but seriously it was! At the end I patted my face down with the damp washcloth and then a clean towel.

The immediate result was an extremely soft face. I loved that aspect of it. Did I need to moisturize? My face felt soft with a slight bit of oil left (which I probably should have steamed off one more time, but whatevs), but I think my skin probably needed to keep some of the oil. In the end I put a little Cetaphil on my forehead just in case. This seems like an unnecessary step for the future. The other concern I have is that my skin can get really red. I can see the piping hot washcloth as a problem for people with rosacea or a tendency for rosacea. This could become a problem if I made this a nightly skin care routine. This morning my skin felt cleansed and not at all oily. I was really pleased with the immediate results, and I think/hope it will only get better!

Hand Soaps

What's on your sink now?
Dial Classic Gold

I'm not ready to give up this clean scent right now. Maybe when I see a spring scent I'll switch, but right now I'm content. Lauren's post brought up an interesting point. Softsoap brand just doesn't do it for me in the handsoap department. I don't feel like I'm killing all the germs. We have the honey & milk scent at the office and I have to use it every day.

More importantly how does everyone feel about the foam soaps? I've read that there's no difference in their cleaning powers, but something about the texture doesn't feel like it's getting all the germs. Which is probably just my OCD-ness, but still. I want a good lather and I feel like some foam brands skip on that. I've sampled the Tone Foaming Hand Wash Island Mist recently. I like the scent, but I think it's just my overall problem with foam soaps that keeps me from loving it. Side note - do you remember Tone bar soap? My mom used to use it in the summer and I love the scent of it. I forgot that they even make this brand still, and the website was not the easiest to find but I'm glad to see them still around.

Q. What do you think when you hear the name, Softsoap?

This was a question that was presented to me at a focus group I participated in at work last fall. We always get emails asking things like, "Are you a working mother with kids aged 5-12?" Or, "Are you an 18-35 male that likes whiskey?" And the most recent and somewhat disturbing question we got in an email last week, "Did your infant suffer from a retrovirus?" Gross. Most of the time I can't participate, but last fall we got one that actually sparked something in me. "Are you a lover of beauty products? If so, please participate in this focus group. A gift bag will be provided. YESSSSSS.

So, I go to the focus group. Turns out 103,482,374,823,748,023 other women in my company also signed up, so they had to break it off into much smaller sections. So small, that I was in a group with only one other girl. So there was a lot of time for questioning. I think the focus group interviewer (a brand planner) got really annoyed with me right off the bat because when I answered the above question, I said "boring." The other girl I was with said something similar. So that sort of set the tone, but I wasn't worried because I got to ramble on about shower gels for an hour and cut out some "beauty-related" pictures from a magazine. All for a gift bag at the end. So, after an hour of discussing, Brand Planner handed us a large toothpaste and a shower gel. SCORE! The shower gel was the new Softsoap body wash called Body Butter Coconut Scrub, and let me tell you, it completely exceeded my expectations!

Now, a point I would like to make here is that I don't dislike the Softsoap brand altogether. I've purchased quite a few of their products in the past. It's just that it doesn't generate a lot of excitement. It's the stuff you find in your grandma's guest bathroom. But I must say, this coconut stuff is great! I usually like to use shower gels that are scented for the season (i.e. I will only use pumpkin spice in the fall), but I went ahead and used the coconut wash in January because it had such a warm and toasty scent. Like chestnuts roasting, or something similar. Another reason I thought it was wintery was because the product itself is pretty thick and softening. Not a cool gel that I would prefer for summer.

So n e wayz, this spring, I needed a new shower gel. I went over to CVS expecting to be totally disappointed in the pathetic selection, but I was wrong. Softsoap unleashed another pleasantly scented shower gel - Body Butter Apricot Scrub. It's lovely! A great scent for spring, this body wash leaves your skin smelling citrus fresh. Are apricots considered citrus fruits? Doesn't matter. I highly recommend it, go check it out!

Correction

I spoke to soon, Katie Holmes' spring haircut is actually to get extensions that obscure her face: